The contextual implications of innovation and entrepreneurship in innovation centres in the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario.

摘要

The implications of college involvement in innovation and entrepreneurship through centres which promote such endeavours have as yet received little consideration. This interpretive study draws upon the work of Levine (1980) on innovation and of Hodgkinson (1978) on organizational purpose formulation to describe the value-motivational behaviour, power and political bases, and human interactions comprising the sociocultural context of innovation and entrepreneurship through innovation centres in three of Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.;Document review, interviews, and participatory observation furnished data for the interpretation. The analysis portrays the value-motivational enactment of innovation and entrepreneurship at the extra-organizational, organizational, and individual levels of these institutions. The conceptual model derived depicts the organizational boundaries resulting from the bureaucratic and political structural-functional norms and interaction patterns impeding integration of innovation centres into college culture.;Findings describe environmental impediments and incentives, particularly as enacted through government fiscal policy. Such policy fosters profitability motives in key organizational decision-makers. These profitability motives contributed extensively to the ultimate termination of innovation centres. Bureaucratic organizational norms, incrementalism in the public service sector, and political and power relationships associated with college innovation and entrepreneurship precluded reflection on relevant value-motivational issues by all but a few individuals. Thus, no major incompatibilities in value-motivational behaviour materialized between innovation centres and their host colleges, although the potential for such incompatibilities clearly existed. In those colleges in which leadership encompassed exploration of value-motivational issues and conscious attention to mutual adaptation to a duality of values, the community service role of innovation centres was most successfully fostered as part of the college's operation.;Implications for the future include elaboration on the importance of interactive leadership to effect mutual understanding, adaptation, and conscious, conscientious attention to values, motives, and educational philosophy and mission. Innovation and entrepreneurship as defined for innovation centres in higher education necessitate deliberation about such issues as privatization of education, the research, community service, and teaching roles of colleges, and the values and skills that innovation and entrepreneurship may inculcate in learners. Such an approach is essential to purposeful direction-setting for the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology.